


Division of the Two Lands

by mayhap



Category: Egyptian Mythology
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Knifeplay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-16
Updated: 2009-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-05 22:06:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayhap/pseuds/mayhap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set's embrace was as tempestuous as the whirlwind, as all-consuming as the grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Division of the Two Lands

When Set was born he did not cry as other infants do. His mother the sky gave him over to his father the earth and his howl resounded through the red land like a jackal's bark or a donkey's bray or some other wild animal's call, but like none of these, and it suited him.

He grew to be strange and wild and secretive, with gleaming pointed teeth and untamed eyes, as capricious as the floods and as cruel as the sandstorms. He took a sister-wife, Nephthys, as free as the air and as wild as he, and together they ruled the harsh upper land, and built up a powerful kingdom, but nothing could satisfy him while his elder brother Osiris ruled over the rich, wide, spreading delta downriver. He seethed, and he raged, and he plotted.

Osiris mourned for his wild brother. He ruled over tidy, prosperous farms and peaceable cities, black delta land nourished by the steady cycles of death, inundation and birth, but he never forgot his baby brother's heartrending cry. Every year he proclaimed a feast for the children of earth and sky, presiding with sweet, smiling Isis over a reunion of half-siblings and demigods, but Set snarled and stormed and would not come.

Some said that Set was born infertile, or that his seed had become as barren as the sand he gloried in. Others said that it was only with women that he was impotent, although none would dare breathe a word on the subject before his small, fiercely private wife, who could rend and tear like a falcon. He had a habit of eating wild lettuces, working the hard lengths with his fingers and his tongue until the sticky milk ran out, but it is not necessary to make much of this. Perhaps, as it has been suggested, the plant was known as a remedy for sterility. Perhaps he simply liked to crunch the cool, bitter thistles between his teeth.

Isis was wiser than her brother-husband. She warned him when she saw Set's wolfish smile that he intended nothing good, and she was right. Osiris greeted his brother with open arms, and perhaps he was right as well, for we are all Osiris.

They feasted on roast fowl and cooked meat, sweets and milk dishes, bread and wine, which flowed in abundance. Set could be charming when he chose, baring his teeth only in smiles, concealing his claws, and there were those who warmed to him, who thought that perhaps the strange, powerful desert god had merely been misunderstood.

Set soon wearied of the crowd, especially his new admirers, whom he despised. He asked to speak with his brother alone, and Osiris slipped away with him, evading even the watchful eye of careful Isis.

Set's embrace was as tempestuous as the whirlwind, as all-consuming as the grave. Osiris was lost in it, as surely as though Set had measured him for his coffin. Even when Set drew out his knife and Osiris felt the point press into the flesh of his back, he only shuddered and moaned as the point plowed rich furrows in his skin and the blood welled up like the life-bringing water of the Nile.

Set filled with rage as Osiris's lifeblood spurted out onto the soil, for his brother was dead and it had given him no satisfaction. He fell on the body with his savage knife, hacking at the base of the erect member and rending the limbs into a bloody pile of butchered meat. Smeared with blood and semen, he cast the body of Osiris into the river, the source of life, molder and decay, and returned to the desert alone.

Perhaps Set, in his jealousy and fury, was wiser than he meant to be, for though Isis traversed the whole kingdom to find the pieces of her husband and knit him back together with her fierce magic, from that day forth he belonged to death and the underworld, a little set apart, a little distant from all the gods of life and the living, as Set was. But if the two brothers ever met again in that strange world of dry dust and snarling teeth, no word ever reached the living.


End file.
